Sopa de Pasta

This is a rather simple dish commonly served in Mexican homes and small restaurants.

The pasta can barely be made out!

Essentially this is chicken broth with tomato and small pasta shapes. The typical recipe calls for frying the pasta a golden brown. But this being a low-fat cooking blog, I didn't do that. It works as well with un-fried pasta, so long as you don't over-cook it. So first you want to almost-cook the pasta in plain water.

Ingredients:

2 liters chicken broth
200 gr. small pasta shapes,a bit under-cooked
350 gr. peeled, seeded, diced  red tomato (or about one medium red tomato, peeled and seeded)
1/3 Onion, quartered
1 clove garlic, quartered
A pinch of fine herbs
1 Bay leaf

Under-cook and drain the pasta and set aside. In a blender place the tomato, onion and garlic. Liquefy the lot and set aside. In a large pot heat the chicken broth slowly, seasoning with fine herbs and a bay leaf (if you've seasoned it when you made it, you can skip this step), and the liquefied tomato from the blender. Stir well.


When the soup begins to bubble, add the pasta and stir. Let it boil, turn off the heat, let it cool a bit and serve.

Traditionally it's seasoned individually with lime to taste. I favor a whole small lime, or half a large one. Other people prefer less. You can also add chopped onion, cilantro or serrano chilies if you like.